Models For The World

Setting The Tone In Moral Leadership

Who said and when? "The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. The Baghdad communiques are belated, insincere, incomplete. Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient that the public knows... We are today not far from a disaster."

Answer: T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia fame) in the British Sunday Times in August, 1920.

On the eve of the Iraq "democratic" elections Western style -- where you are free to vote for anyone that an invading, occupying power says you can -- it seems apt to recall the words quoted by journalist Robert Fisk in his article a month ago in the Global Echo. Click here for full text.

More deja vu in a similar vein:

This time from Eric Margolis:
Who was the first high government official to authorize use of mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq? If your answer was Saddam Hussein's cousin, the notorious "Chemical Ali" -- aka Ali Hassan al-Majid -- you're wrong. The correct answer: Sainted Winston Churchill. As colonial secretary and secretary for war and air, he authorized the RAF in the 1920s to routinely use mustard gas against rebellious Kurdish tribesmen in Iraq and against Pashtun tribes on British India's northwest frontier. Click here for full text.